наука советология

[borislvin]

In the face of mounting evidence that Soviet politics was becoming increasingly unstable, Hough persisted in presenting Mikhail Gorbachev as entirely in control until the Soviet leader was stripped of all power in the fall of 1991. Gorbachev, he argued, had a strategy and "acted as if he needed to create conditions of controlled chaos." Even when the failed putsch of August 1991 appeared to have greatly diminished his authority vis-à-vis Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Hough claimed that Gorbachev "[came] out strengthened” and that real power had shifted to a "council of republics" that he controlled. The Gorbachev fixation was at its peak at the plenary session of the annual convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), in Miami in November, when Hough stated, to the puzzlement of the audience that had filled a banquet hall, that Gorbachev was still "in firm charge," and that Yeltsin was "little more than [his] puppet." Sixteen days later, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus dissolved the Soviet Union in the Belovezh Accords.

Dominique Arel "Jerry Hough, Scholar and Entrepreneur"
"Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History"
Volume 22, Number 3, Summer 2021
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/801247